Background
My app was already complete and running on Replit, so I used that working repo as the baseline to test other IDEs. The app uses LiteLLM in proxy mode on a separate port, and getting this setup to run smoothly turned out to be a major stumbling block for every IDE I tested - so it played a big role in shaping my final impressions. I used to do full-stack dev back in 2005, but never moved beyond classic ASP - never touched ASP.NET or C++. So while I’ve got some instincts and am comfortable with SQL and traditional deployment principles (think hand-managed Apache servers in the basement), basically none of that experience translates to today’s cloud-based, containerised dev environment. And I’m strictly a vibe-coder! Also, this was done last week when Replit has truly been performing! Assistant is giving Agent, at way less than 20% of the end-result cost.
Summary
1. IDE Interface (ranked)
- CLINE (VS Code): Most polished; ultra-fast; agent with live context awareness in a sidebar.
- Replit: Solid fallback; slower and more opaque; very reliable.
- Cursor: Overhyped; UI is clunky, unintuitive, and poorly laid out.
- Firebase Studio (FBS): Fast UI in theory; failed to deliver; too immature.
2. Database
- Neon: Seamless across all IDEs; directly accepts Replit-style DB URLs.
- Replit & Neon: Interfaces are identical; smooth handover.
- External tools (DBeaver): No meaningful value-add; no visualisation tools like MS Access.
- Performance: Hosted DBs uniformly slow; Replit’s as good as any.
- FBS: Never got to co-hosting due to broader FBS limitations.
3. Dev Runtime (ranked)
- CLINE: Excellent guidance; used browser dev tools creatively; manual effort occasionally needed.
- Replit: Easiest dev experience; when it breaks, it helps fix; strong feedback loops. But slow, and restarting costs LOTS of time.
- Cursor: Unreliable; bad at debugging; surprisingly massive disappointment.
- FBS: Catastrophic fail; could not run LiteLLM; faked chat responses instead of running backend.
4. Deployment
- Replit: Instant deployment; live with 30 test users.
- CLINE / Cursor: Tested Railway, Render, Fly.io - all failed; debugging was a nightmare.
- FBS: Never even reached deployable state.
Details
1. IDE Interface
CLINE inside VS Code was clearly the standout. Its agent sat neatly in a dedicated sidebar and actively tracked context across files and changes, making the development flow feel tight, intelligent, and responsive. The interface itself was lightning fast - so much so that it made you want it to be your daily driver. Replit, while less transparent and slower, was still solid, with helpful defaults and smoother fallback behaviours that made it the easiest platform to simply get things done. Cursor, on the other hand, was a mess. Despite being praised everywhere as the most ChatGPT-integrated IDE, its UI felt illogical, confusing, and hard to navigate - like a bad remix of ideas that never quite gelled. Firebase Studio (FBS) gave a promising first impression: snappy for a cloud IDE and quick to launch. But the hope faded fast once you tried to do anything serious - it never matched the cohesion of CLINE or even Replit.
2. Database
Neon made things refreshingly easy across the board. It allowed direct pasting of the Replit-hosted database URL and required no special setup or translation. In fact, the Neon interface looked and behaved exactly like the Replit one, making the transition between platforms seamless. I tested a few external DB managers like DBeaver, hoping for MS Access-style relationship mapping and visual aids - but these tools added essentially zero additional value. Since I’m fluent in SQL, that wasn’t a huge loss, but the promise of better tooling fell flat. Once abstracted behind an ORM or API, all the IDEs handled the database equally well. In terms of performance, every hosted DB (including Replit’s) was noticeably slower than a local instance - but none stood out as particularly worse or better. I really wanted FBS to work here, mainly to co-host the DB and the app, but it never even reached a state where that was possible.
3. Dev Runtime
Replit offered the most dependable dev experience by a wide margin. It always worked - or, when it didn’t, it told you exactly why, and how to fix it. You always came right eventually. That said, I did get the sneaky suspicion that it sometimes hid or abstracted certain errors to maintain that illusion of smoothness. That suspicion became stronger when I moved the exact same working Replit repo into Cursor and CLINE for deployment, and things started crashing in ways that Replit never warned me about.
CLINE was nearly as competent in the dev phase. Occasionally I had to copy-paste terminal output into the agent, but the feedback loop was strong. Most impressively, CLINE knew how to use the browser’s developer tools. It guided me through opening the right tabs, capturing specific info, and sending it back, which it interpreted and acted on. That was a power move - something Replit should study closely.
Cursor, though, just bombed. It was unreliable, unhelpful, and often left me guessing. I frequently (every 20mins?) got “Connection failed”, requiring a restart of the app, and the last instruction. Well covered on the web, and nothing I did made it better. Even when it did work, the large-scale refactoring I was hoping for is a complete BS pipe dream! Rather work on replit in tiny steps
FBS was the worst of the bunch. It never even got LiteLLM running; instead, it emulated a chat response by pretending the backend was live, which made debugging utterly pointless. I eventually stripped the whole thing down and created a brand-new, bare-bones PoC using nothing but a chat interface, LiteLLM, and OpenAI keys. Even then, it failed at startup. Switching between its beginner and coding modes was chaotic, and window management was abysmal. FBS simply isn’t ready.
Now at one stage I’d decided i wanted Cline as my IDE, and I would sync back to Replit via the repo for deployment. I wanted the Cline snappiness and perhaps even a local db copy during dev. I expected refactoring greatness. But the Cline costs drove me back to Replit. Damn…it loads SO much into context, and whilst your first chat round trip is 0.002c, each round trip quickly grows to 0.5c, and the total then blasts past Replit’s 0.25c Agent cost in a few rounds. I blew $20 in Anthropic API costs in a single day. Then for refactoring…my code base is small, yet not even the client OR server files fit in context at once. Which is why I gave FBS such a good try…for Gemini’s 1M context.
4. Deployment
Deployment is where things truly fell apart outside of Replit. Replit’s deployment experience was nearly magical: just a few clicks, instant feedback, and boom - you’re live. I’ve already got 30 users testing the app in production. But the moment I tried deploying that same working codebase using Cursor or CLINE, everything disintegrated. I tested three platforms - Railway, Render, and Fly.io - and all of them failed to produce a working deployment. Worse, the logs were either absent or activated too late to catch the crash. The app would die before any debug output was available.
CLINE did its best, attempting advanced tricks like injecting logging very high up in the stack. ChatGPT was also helping in tandem, and we threw everything at the problem. But none of it worked. I strongly suspect Replit is silently patching or suppressing certain runtime issues that only reveal themselves when you leave its ecosystem. That black-box behaviour made it impossible to get the same app running elsewhere. FBS, for its part, never even got out of dev mode. Deployment was a non-starter because the runtime didn’t work in the first place.